Spring 2012, I read about a Mad Hatter's Tea Party arranged by illustrator Lynn Chapman (Lynn's blog is here). I was so inspired by the drawings the group produced I decided to arrange my own tea party, which I held last weekend.

Planning started this January, whilst I was home in UK, and saw me making a dormouse, which inspired us all at the tea, as our drawings below show.

3 dormouses or is that dormice?

Homemade hat & roses.

In a UK charity shop, I bought a silver tiered cake stand, which conveniently screwed apart so I could pack it easily. At the tea, I added tarts (custard not jam) and cakes I iced with "eat me". Some macaroons from the Chedi hotel were added later. I attempted to captured them all in the sketch at the top of this post. The other thing I did in the UK was to get material for my Hatter's hat and planned how to make it, with a great suggestion from mum.

In Muscat, I made my hat, paper roses - painting some white ones red, but the scones were bought at a local deli.

The group shot thanks to the magic of a self-timer - just.

My flat is small so it was a small but select group of us who participated. Unfortunately one lady got lost and never arrived.

On 21st November I made the first guide pencil marks on this drawing and it has been lurking ever since. From starting it, I've ... finished Festival Face #6, you can see her here, drawn and donated a drawing for a charity exhibition,had a commission to do, arranged & attended 2 sketching events,had a stall for my art at a winter fair, produced 2 illustrations for The Story Shack,and spent 3 weeks on holiday in UK.I guess that's enough reasons for it to have taken so long.

Whilst in the UK I went to 2 more life drawing classes. As with drawing TerryI took charcoal to draw with as I'd had such fun before. In the 2nd class, I also tried using watercolours directly without under-drawing. I think as a side-effect of drawing portaits for my Festival Faces series, with both models I ended up drawing portraits during the long poses. Gaby was so pleased with my drawing of her that she took a photo of it. Below are other drawings of Gaby.

The day before I left UK, I got to draw Rachel and her tattoos again. I drew her before in September 2011 and you can see those drawings here. With the first long pose I drew the charcoal portrait below, which I think is a fair likeness. Then did the rough full body drawing. Can you tell I was pre-occupied with what I had to do before my flight the next morning?